Silence
by Scribe Shiloh
Summary: [oneshot, Subarucentric drabble] An introspective piece drawing Subaru's life around the theme of silence.


The act of breaking a glass cup is an act of possession and of power-a display of destruction in a might all the destoyer's own. But the act is fleeting, and in the end, flawed. For the pieces of the shattered cup scatter far on smooth, darkened floors, and in the unlit apartment of a killer's heart there is no reclaiming them. The fragmented pieces, should he try and glue them back together, will never be what he owned before.

He's patched himself back together, piece against cold, jagged piece, and the holes are visible and painful to the touch.

Subaru does not belong wholly to Seishirou.

Subaru wonders if Seishirou knows this.

He doesn't think that Seishirou cares.

##

There is no such thing as silence. The moment every other noise ceases and the thickness of the air collapses inward, it presses against his eardrums and sets them humming-a machine in a cold, sterile room counting out his heartbeats.

The only silence is in death.

##

Sometimes when he smokes he catches a glimpse of himself in a shop window. His reflection is pasted with the outline of his good eye hovering over a golden icon on a white t-shirt, and the green fades away, overtaken by the metallic colour, and Subaru looks into an image not himself.

He sees who he is trying to become. He wonders, sometimes, if he's made the right choice. He wonders if in becoming him, he can understand him, or even if he can become him at all.

He doesn't truly wish for the silence. What he really wants is for Seishirou to see him, to touch him, to decide that he exists and is precious like every other soul he takes beneath his scythe is precious.

Subaru has been alone for too long to want true silence. It will be an emptiness from within so dry and vast that the humming in his ears now would be fruit to a man in winter.

He would bear it, knowing that for an instant he had truly belonged to Seishirou.

He wants that intimacy more than he fears any silence.

##

In the solitude of his bedroom at night, he reads. The small lamp at his side casts a yellow glow on the crisp pages of his book. The silence of his apartment is broken only by his breathing and by the clip of pages turning. It is enough not to hear the humming in his ears.

He reads science fiction-one of his few secret indulgences. Jules Verne is his favourite. He finds a guilty delight in the naive and childish practicality of the heros, their obvious and infallible science. The tales are wild enough to pull him away from his bleak existence and into a sky full of planets and dust but earthy enough still to make him believe. He needs it-he can't be strong forever without something to break free to. Otherwise the ceiling, dripping with darkness, will keep him awake with tales of how alone he is.

Reality will always be there when he returns anyway.

##

On the nights when he doesn't read he lies with his back to the window and stares at the patch of darkness at the far edge of the room that is the door. Shadows bruise from exhaustion in footsteps over his vision, but he does not sleep until he feels another's touch slide about his waist and pull him backwards, close into a familiar body. The silence is muffled by another person's breathing.

He wonders if Verne's heros ever felt like this. He wonders if they were human, too, if behind the paper and print and science they were glass cups just as he is.

It doesn't matter.

It is moments like this, with the shadows on his eyes and breath on his shoulder, that he feels the most alone. Seishirou sleeps behind him and holds him, and the pressure of his opposite's hand on his solar plexus warms his insides, but the warmth doesn't reach his soul. He is trapped. He is lost.

He doesn't know how to get closer to Seishirou than this, but even this seems to bring him further from his wish. Seishirou doesn't see him. The golden eye could be frozen in space for all the life it holds, even when Seishirou presses him down and hushes him.

Seishirou's silence is the most terrifying noise in the world.

Subaru doesn't see the confusion and wonder flicker between the gold iris and black pupil. He's always asleep before then. He never knows how near he's really gotten, how deep he's really touched.

##

In the end, the silence he will find will be his own. Sitting on a rooftop dressed in black and watching another spirit shield wither and flake away like a glass cup melting into sand, he will not hear the screams. He will not hear the wind. He will not hear the splintering ground as yet another dragon rips through concrete and bone. He will not hear the Tree screaming in his head. He will not even hear the sound of his own heart.

Instead he will watch as the world slowly ends and wonder what the final silence will be like.


End file.
